ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a deep analysis of the dissolution of Yugoslavia for the purpose of discerning to what extent the mechanisms that deepened the Yugoslav crisis in the 1980s may offer lessons for the European Union (EU) since the outbreak of the global economic crisis in 2008. While EU member states are unable to agree on a shared strategy for growth, a sense of powerlessness that generates insecurity and social tensions is spreading and multiplied by demographic changes and the mobility of people on the continent. All together these factors are producing new waves of nationalism and xenophobia. Meanwhile, the economic crisis that affected the country was characterized by high (for the time) international debt (worsened by the rapidly increasing rate of the US dollar), high expenses in unproductive investments, a huge bureaucratic mechanism that oppressed the free development of cooperation among the self-managed enterprises, the social services, and the local communities.
